I'd say that bass solo in You're So Square is just another thing that adds to Presley's standing as the baddest man that ever lived, but I don't see it as being THAT musically important or noteworthy.

Yes, there's no question about The Beatles' high musical impact in any case. I was just using "I Saw Him Standing There" as an example. I could just have easily have used a remake of a song written by a different artist.

I'm not sure I understand your response, but if I do understand, the bolded is the most important part of it. Songwriting is an aspect of musical impact, and to be concerned with any of the circumstances of other artists doing an artist's songs is splitting hairs, whether that circumstance is whether or not it's a remake, or how much later the other artists did those songs. Is that what you're saying?

Since Elvis has very high musical impact anyway, it wouldn't score significantly in proportion to his overall musical impact. The only question is whether it scores insignificantly or not at all. GnR was covering a song that he did, and that he made famous, but that he didn't write.

I'd say that's a musical impact moment for Elvis, because GnR did the song out of a love for the version that Elvis made world famous-- although like you said,it hardly even matters; his musical impact is huge already.

You could certainly make a case for Whitney being more popular than Janet, but there are some measures by which Janet beats Whitney. Whitburn's top 40 singles guide from 2004 lists Janet as the #7 singles artist of all time, with Whitney at #11. Whitney has no top 40 singles since then, and Janet has 2. Janet has spent 33 weeks at #1 on the US singles chart; Whitney has spent 31. Janet has 24 US top 10 singles; Whitney has 23.

I consider worldwide sales figues to be unreliable, though I agree that The Bodyguard beats Janet in popularity. Whitney might beat Janet in popularity overall even by the way I measure it, but I don't think the difference between the two is very big.

I agree.
As already discussed, Mariah, Whitney and Janet are close to a tie, in overall.

See, where I disagree with you is this: if we do find some obscure record from 1955 with a bass solo, I don't believe that that artist ought to get as much credit, or more, for that than Elvis. Because it's much more likely that people are doing electric bass solos because Elvis did one than because that other guy did one. That guy *might* deserve substantial credit *if* Elvis got the idea from him. Or maybe not.

In the case of rockabilly, I don't think there's any definition of rockabilly you could come up with where Elvis' first Sun record was the first record that qualifies. But Elvis didn't need to do it first to be the one who defined the genre, and therefore to be the primary person who gets credit for that influence.

I have no idea how you're defining "power ballads" here.



Hmmm...I don't know, I was talking about what's possible, not what's desirable. If I had the means to spend huge amounts of time listening to music, would I try to listen to everything? I don't know.

Sure there is.

The Charlies Feathers definition which says that "If there's drums, or violins, or steel guitars, it's not rockabilly."

The Bill Haley stuff on Essex is considered rockabilly by some, but not by rockabilly purists. If there's anything other than an acoustic bass, a lead guitar and a rhythm guitar, it's not considered to be rockabilly by the purists. If the record has a piano some purists do not consider it to be rockabilly. Jerry Lee is considered to be plain rock and roll rather than rockabilly, by these pursists.

What record would you offer up as being rockabilly from before "That's All Right" b/w "Blue Moon Of Kentucky?"

Beats me. I'm far from an expert on these things. But I'm sure someone made a record with just acoustic bass, lead guitar, and rhythm guitar before that. And even if I'm wrong--my point is, it doesn't matter. If we find such a record, it doesn't change the fact that it was Elvis who made that the standard. It was Elvis whom everyone else was influenced by.

If that were the case then Presley would get enormous secondary influence for it instead. You can't say someone gets primary influence if they were the first and made it famous, but if they were not first they should get just as much credit anyway, otherwise you're crediting that person no matter what the evidence supports, which is subjective and the very thing that ruins lists. You need to start with set criteria and then stick with it, even if what you discover changes your view on things. That's the only fair way to do it.

I think the problem remains that people want to have a list that SEEMS right and then finagle the criteria to support it rather than establish criteria and let the chips fall where they may.

I'm not really big on remakes having any real impact, I think people are drastically overrating that. Artists choose to do songs for so many different reasons that you can't assume it's because of some affinity for the original performer. I highly doubt the Cleftones were even aware of Hoagy Carmichael when they cut Heart & Soul and turned it into a rock classic, let alone thought he was brilliant. It was just a good song, that's all. People today are way too wrapped up in remakes of songs as if they mean something more than that.

But what I WAS trying to say was that artists who also wrote songs for others - Chuck Willis, Smokey Robinson, Curtis Mayfield, Bruce Springsteen, etc. - did get a lot of respect from their peers for their songwriting ability as a whole and therefore those songs (for example: Oh What A Dream written by Willis for Ruth Brown; My Girl written by Smokey for the Temptations, The Monkey Time written by Mayfield for Major Lance, Fire written by Springsteen for Elvis Presley, who died before he could be presented with it, then done by Robert Gordon and eventually the hit version by the Pointer Sisters) are surely factoring in to their overall acclaim from other artists. But since we're not giving individual credit for each specific song it doesn't really matter at all who they were written for. If an artist is lauded for their writing ability it's gonna show up in their Musical Impact regardless of how many songs they wrote for others.

I'm not trying to finagle any criteria. I'm not arguing for any particular result here. I'm just saying that I don't like your criteria. You're basing influence on who did it first, and your own stated reason for that is that it's hard to determine who actually had the influence. I think that's the wrong way to go about.

I think your way of doing it is much MORE subject to finagling. Right here we've been talking about different definitions of rockabilly. If we define it by instrumental lineup, then maybe Elvis made the first rockabilly record. If we define in terms of style, that it's a certain mix of R&B and country influences, then he didn't. Why should that matter, when the plain fact is that it was Elvis that defined what the style became and influenced the vast majority of those who followed?

And then there's Clash's point about live performances, which happens to be directly on point here. Johnny and Dorsey Burnette were performing with Paul Burlison by 1953, with exactly that instrumental lineup of lead guitar, rhythm guitar, and acoustic bass, with no other instruments (at least some of the time). So why does Elvis get "primary influence" because he was the first one to get it on record? Why should things be changed one iota if "You're Undecided" had been recorded before "That's All Right"? (Indeed, there seem to be some sources that claim that it was, although I gather that this is suspect.) Why is it that if you found a record made with that lineup in, say, Georgia, that you'd credit that for influence even if it was highly unlikely that Elvis had never heard it, but an artist Elvis was aware of in his hometown doesn't get credit for his live performances? We shouldn't be adjusting the criteria based on what's easy to verify.

The problem here is that the early version of "You're Undecided" is not rockabilly at all, but straight country. Same thing for the flip side, which has a fiddle as the lead instrument.

Other than Elvis, here's the only real rockabilly record that I have from 1954. It was reviewed the same week as the second Elvis single on Sun, early November of 1954. And even this has a piano break which would kill it as rockabilly for some real hard corers.

Bruce, you once posted a Bill Haley tune from 1952 that was rockabilly, I think in order to prove that Haley did it first.
Do you remember what song it was? I remember Clash really liked it...